As in (to mangle Josef Stalin*) “No police union, no problem:”
Crime-ridden Camden, New Jersey – often referred to as the most dangerous city in the United States—is getting rid of its police department.
In the latest example of a cash-strapped municipality taking drastic measures to deal with swollen public sector liabilities and shrinking budgets, the city plans to disband its 460-member police department and replace it with a non-union “Metro Division” of the Camden County Police. Backers of the plan say it will save millions of dollars for taxpayers while ensuring public safety, but police unions say it is simply a way to get out of collective bargaining with the men and women in blue.
(H/T: Hot Air) Why can’t it be both?
…What? This is a purely internal matter within the Democratic party: remember, the police unions endorsed Jon Corzine in the last election, and this surprised precisely nobody. And now the Democratic party is turning on those unions, and they have no friends to bail them out.
Guess the Fraternal Order of Police chose… poorly.
Moe Lane
*Yeah. That is kind of rude of me. Then again, we’re talking about New Jersey: where the weak are killed and eaten.
My sympathies for all parties here are…. muted, if you will. IOW, karma: it’s what’s for dinner.
In the fall of 1983, I was part of a touring children’s theatre troupe that did a lot of shows in the tri-state area…We were in a bunch of ostensibly crime-ridden places, among others…Harlem, South Bronx, inner-city Philadelphia, Newark. The only place we felt physically unsafe was Camden. Obviously, things haven’t improved in nearly thirty years…sad, the people there deserve better…
disband the police department? I’m sure it’ll be fine. What could go wrong?
Jbird: I hear that there’s this Michigan company that’s planning to offer Camden a variety of alternative policing models. Some real bleeding edge stuff, too.
They’d disband Camden, if they could make somewhere else then pay for all the various social pathologies.